On July 11th, 2011, I will undergo radical surgery to change my life. I am having a sleeve gastrectomy performed. During this laparoscopic surgery, around 75% of my stomach will be removed, creating a “sleeve” or banana shape organ in place of my current stomach. Effectively, this will limit the amount of food that I will be able to eat to an entrée size meal. Permanently. This blog is my journey as I literally shrink.

Monday, 27 June 2011

The beginning...

I have put much thought into this decision and reconciled that it is the only option if I want to live a healthy life and if I want to have children. My family and friends are so very supportive of my decision. I thank them for that. It does, however, sadden me that only one person has told me that they like me just the way I am. My boss. A 43 year old male. The only person. Shame on you all. You haven’t upset me, but I won’t forget. It doesn’t always occur to people to say they like you the way you are and you don’t need to change, but when he did, it touched me.

I have always had a healthy appetite.I remember at the age of 8 or 9 going to sleep over at my neighbour’s house. My friend, J, called me a pig and exclaimed in front of her whole family that I ate just as much as her dad did.I didn’t see a problem.Didn’t everyone eat this much? At that point I wasn’t overweight.I was a very active child and I did dancing and singing and netball and softball and little athletics and rode my bike for hours every afternoon.

I remember always wanting more.More of anything I wasn’t allowed to have.I remember getting up in the middle of the night to drink Coke out of the fridge because we weren’t allowed to drink it.I remember hiding in the pantry to eat biscuits I knew I wasn’t allowed to eat, I remember going over to the neighbours houses to get something to eat because I had been told that I had eaten enough.When I turned 11 the food began catching up with me and I became bigger than the others.But I didn’t see it.I do now, when I look back on photographs, but back then I thought I was just like everyone else.

I only recently began to think of myself as fat.It may shock you to hear that.I’ve always known that I was bigger than others, but only a bit bigger. Surely.I have always had a very healthy level of self esteem and self confidence.My larger than life personality and straight shooting tongue got me through many situations where I may have been taunted for my size.I could always walk the walk and talk the talk and always managed to fit in, no matter where I went.I suppose my size made me a little intimidating to others.This matched with my loud, sometimes obnoxious, voice made sure that the attention was off my size.

So this is my blog.This is day one of my pre-operative diet to shrink my liver.This is it.I have no idea of what lies ahead but I know that I needed somewhere to tell my story.It’s going to be blunt, it’s going to contain bad language, but most importantly, it’s going to be an honest recount of my journey.I hope that it serves as an entertaining and amusing blog for interested parties.I hope that people in a similar situation can share their experiences and give me advice, but most of all I hope that I make it through the first 6 months!